


Murals

by InvertedPhantasmagoria



Category: Bleach
Genre: Accidental Bonding, Arrancar Reader, Developing Relationship, Friendship, Gen, Headcanon, Hidden Depths, Mildly Dubious Fluff, No murder, Painting, Reader-Insert, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-26 20:34:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19775926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InvertedPhantasmagoria/pseuds/InvertedPhantasmagoria
Summary: So you stop in front of a door that looks very much like it needs some cheer. You take the one paint-stained brush that you have, pop the lid off of the yellow paint, and get to work.This door is going to be fuckingbeautiful.. . .Reader accidentally gets into a mess with Nnoitra, that turns out to be a lot less of a mess than it should be. A surprisingly fluffy prompt from tumblr.





	Murals

**Author's Note:**

> This... is soft. Like, actually soft. For once, I didn't make anything horrible happen. I know, out of character XD But anyway, this was a tumblr request that I got real inspired for and that came out surprisingly well. I'm messing with a new fic style, and I think I like it??? Expect to see more of this style soon probably!

You might be something of an idiot. For an Arrancar, a creature made of stuffed together souls and misery, you really might be just plain going against your nature. 

What are you doing that’s so ridiculous? Murals. Fucking murals. Murals made from stolen paint from the human world and slapped haphazardly on the too-white walls of the prison that’s called Las Noches. You really don’t know what you’re doing– painting is kind of a foreign art for  _ Arrancar _ –, but you are having fun. And you think that the results don’t look half bad in the end. 

...even if they are a little messy. 

And even if by ‘a little messy’ you mean ‘literally just whatever colors you think are pretty spattered all over the walls in places so abandoned that you won’t get in any trouble for putting them there’. 

You honestly think that the only reason you’re not dead yet is because Aizen finds what you’re doing to be funny. You’re not exactly against this. If he’s amused enough by one of his creations going impromptu artist on the walls of his palace, far be it from you to tell him to change his mind. 

. . . 

Wandering the halls of Lash Noches is fun, in a weird way. You got awfully used to sand and wind and not much else back when you were still more Hollow than person, and even if the halls tend to twist themselves around seemingly on their own, you can always jump out of a window and find your way back to where you belong the hard way. 

It doesn’t hurt you to stay up to date on your window-jumping practices anyway. You never know when you’re going to need them!

But for now, you’ve got three buckets of paint with you– sunshine yellow, pastel lavender, and a soft shade of bubblegum pink. They’re all dangling from your wrist, jangling back and forth with the kind of clatter that you’d worry about if you weren’t so far from everyone and everything. You’re in the part of Las Noches that literally no one bothers with. You think you can afford to be a little conspicuous for now. 

The hallways do a bit of their weird twisty things after you get past the twenty-second corner, but you don’t really care. You don’t feel anyone’s spiritual pressure, so you’re probably still good. At worst, it’s Ichimaru messing with you. You  _ know  _ he finds what you do funny. 

So you stop in front of a door that looks very much like it needs some cheer. You take the one paint-stained brush that you have, pop the lid off of the yellow paint, and get to work. 

This door is going to be fucking  _ beautiful.  _

The first coat of yellow sticks out like a neon sign (gorgeous things, you’ve seen them in the human world), and the pink on top of that, spattered in messy spots, looks even better. Exactly how you want it. There’s paint all over your hands, and you’re grinning ear to ear. 

For the lavender, you drop your brush and dig into the bucket with your bare hands, splotching the paint onto the smooth  _ who-knows-what  _ manually, covering up almost all of the white. 

By the time you’re as done as you’re going to get, there’s paint all down your uniform, all over your hands and face and in your hair. 

You can even feel some of it dripping off of your mask.  _ Wild.  _

On to the next wall, you think, eyeing the remaining paint with delight. You’ve got a little under half of the yellow left, and even more of the pink and purple. Pleeeenty for making somewhere else look a little better. This whole area is gonna be fabulous when you’re done with it. 

It’s around that point that you feel the absolute worst possible spiritual pressure slam down on your shoulders like it’s trying to kill you. 

_ Fuck _ , you think emphatically. Then; _ fuuuuck _ . 

You know exactly who that energy belongs to– who doesn’t– and it’s Espada number five himself, Nnoitra Gilga, slaughterer of fucking anyone who gets in his way. You glance up at the door you just painted, and make a very unfortunate connection. This area is most likely part of  _ Nnoitra’s  _ personal territory. You have indeed fucked up. 

Cursing the way smell never seems to stick in this awful place, you drop your paint supplies, only bothering to grab your brush, and do the only thing you think you can at this point of being in deep shit. 

You fling yourself out the first window you see. 

. . . 

Is Nnoitra hunting you down? Probably. Are you scared to shit for just what kind of bloody smear you’re going to be very shortly? Definitely. 

You get the message from the gossip that goes around when people think no one else is listening that Nnoitra is  _ pissed.  _ And after someone in particular. You bury your paint-stained uniform in the sand, hide your brush, and pray that no one figures out that it’s you. You don’t trust a single one of these fuckers not to rat you out at the first possible opportunity. 

And you lay low. You lay as low as you possibly can. Like, if you were any lower, you’d be burying yourself in the sand and meeting the same fate as your ruined uniform. And that’s far too low. 

Really, you mostly just hide out in the darkest parts of Lash Noches’s brightly lit halls, staying on the move constantly and praying that Nnoitra doesn’t find you. You’re small, sneaky, and good at hiding your spiritual pressure, which helps your case a lot. No one really cares about you or where you are either, which helps your case a lot more. You consider throwing yourself into the human world a few times too. 

That lasts for a few days, or whatever passes for days in a world of endless sunlight. You think many times that you really  _ are  _ an idiot. 

Then, things go thoroughly to shit. 

. . . 

You sleep. You have to  _ eventually,  _ even if Hollows don’t really need much of it. The nap lasts for maybe all of an hour, right up until you’re shocked awake by the very distinct feeling of Nnoitra Gilga’s spiritual pressure slamming down on your shoulders from not too far away. 

For a second, you freeze. Some awful prey instinct takes over, and in the moment that you think you’re surely going to be killed, you can’t bring yourself to move for anything. 

But then, the pressure moves a distinct ways closer, and you realize that you’re either going to have to haul ass or face death. 

Of course, your first thought is to find an escape route, and fast. There’s a window a short ways down the hall, and even if this is kind of your go-to trick at this point, it fucking  _ works.  _ Good luck catching anything that’s already on the ground and finding a place to hide. 

You haul yourself up onto the sill, scan for a good place to land, and with the crushing feeling of that man’s spiritual pressure getting ever closer, you jump before you can think twice. 

A too-strong hand catches your collar. 

Unsurprisingly, you scream.

A second hand clamps down over your mouth, cutting you off with the taste of blood and sand on your tongue. The one holding onto the back of your shirt hauls you back inside so roughly that you choke. You’re unceremoniously dropped onto the floor, hard enough that it actually  _ hurts,  _ and then, then, you look up to Nnoitra Gilga standing over you. 

In a move that shocks exactly no one, you black out. 

. . . 

You wake up in a place that smells a lot like blood and a little bit like someone that you really don’t want to think about. You’re not broken, not yet, but there’s a bruise around your throat and a knot on your head that makes you feel like you were  _ dropped  _ out of a window. 

You open your eyes, see Nnoitra sitting just a few feet away, and scream all over again. A little one this time.

“Fuck! You’re too damn  _ noisy. _ ” 

Nnoitra glares at you, and you cut the scream off instantly. You’d much rather be quiet than dead. Actually, you’re not really sure why you’re not dead already. 

“Damn, was that so hard? You’re not missing any limbs yet, are you?”

The fifth Espada is all tall, skinny lines and sharp angles. Despite his size, you think you could wrap your hand around his wrist with room to spare. His tongue freaks you out. His eye looks downright mean. The massive scythe propped up against the wall a short ways away does not bode well for your chances of getting out of this alive. 

Nnoitra looks at you like you’re a particularly interesting bug. You’re glad beyond measure that the ‘interesting’ part is there. 

You realize a second later that you’re in his space. As in, literally in one of his personal rooms. It might even be a bedroom, from the way that the smell of him actually sort of sticks. 

“Why the fuck did you make my door... like that? Do you have some kind of fucking death wish?” he asks, and you realize exactly what he’s talking about so quickly that it almost gives you whiplash. 

“First of all, I’m sorry _.  _ Second, I’m  _ sorry. _ ” The last part comes out as more of a squeak. A muscle by Nnoitra’s eye twitches. 

“Quit apologizing.” You flinch. “I asked for a reason, not a ‘sorry’. I don’t want to kill you,  _ yet _ , so get a spine and don’t fucking make me want to.” 

Well that’s. That’s something. Apparently you’re not going to be quite as dead as you assumed you were. Maybe he thinks your painting is entertaining too? You know the Shinigami do. Still, it seems weird that someone like him would be amused by you spattering garish colors all over his wall and you are going to cut that thought right the fuck off  _ here  _ before you get too distracted to give the man with the big scythe a good answer. 

“It’s pretty.” You blurt out. Nnoitra looks at you with some unreadable gaze. “The colors, I mean. Everything is white here, so I go around painting things. I stay away from others’ territory, of course, but the hallways did a twisty-thing and I didn’t know that the door was yours. That’s it.”

Instead of putting a scythe through your midsection, Nnoitra laughs. 

“That’s  _ it?  _ You’re either fucking stupid, or you’ve got some balls. You really go around doing that shit where that damn Shinigami could figure it out? Where anybody could catch you?” 

“I have been told I’m an idiot,” you say with certainty. 

That gets you another laugh, this time a little closer to genuine. You think, daringly, that you might not be going to die. 

“Are you going to kill me?” you ask a second later, because your brain-to-mouth filter is apparently all kinds of terrible. Nnoitra stops laughing, and you feel yourself catch on a breath. 

“No. Why would I? Have you done something that I’d kill you for?” You shake your head as hard as you can. “Then there. You’re fucking weak. I don’t bother killing weaklings like you unless they really piss me off.”

With that, Nnoitra kicks you out of his room and shuts the door. 

You notice that the paint hasn’t been touched.

. . . 

Some time later, maybe a week in the human world, you’re right back to painting. Stupid as it is, it didn’t get you killed last time, and you’re really too nervous to lose the one thing that you actually enjoy. 

This time, you’ve got a seafoam green, a turquoise blue, and more of the same sunshine yellow. You’re painting entirely by hand, forgoing the brush and spreading the colors around the (this time outdoor) wall yourself. Everything is going a funny shade of green-blue, only streaks of the yellow wound through it, and in your mind, it looks perfect. 

An impulse strikes you, and you paint out a small outline of a very particular scythe, brilliant yellow against the crisp, sterile white. Your finger traces the curve that you remember by heart, leaving smears of green. 

You cover it a second later because you’re not  _ that  _ stupid.

. . . 

Nnoitra finds you again about three days after that. 

You haven’t been able to sneak a trip into the human world in a while, so you’re stuck with the remains of paint that are left. You have exactly one bucket of the yellow. You’re absentmindedly tracing circles of it onto a slab of stone abandoned out in the sand when you feel Nnoitra’s spiritual pressure approaching you once again. 

For reasons that you can’t place, you’re not as scared as you should be. Yeah, he still makes you feel like curling up into a little ball and praying he gets bored before taking off any parts of you, but... 

He did let you go last time without more than a little yelling. And he  _ did _ say that you’re too weak to bother with. 

You’ve never been more grateful that you’re kind of pathetic. 

Footsteps hiss through the sand; long, slow strides. You don’t look up. Nnoitra’s spiritual pressure crushes down on your shoulders, making it hard to breathe, but you still don’t look up.

He found you once. He found you again. If he wants to kill you that badly, there’s not a whole lot you can do about it. 

“Th’ fuck are you doing?” Nnoitra asks, his scythe hitting the ground about four feet to your right. You only flinch a little. 

“Painting.”

“I can see that, stupid.”

You shrug, trying to look small. It’s not hard, next to someone who has a good two feet on you. You can feel Nnoitra glaring at you, but not with anger. Just... neutral glaring, if that’s even a thing. 

Whatever it is, it’s better than bloodlust. 

“Why that color?” he asks a second later, squatting down much too close to you. 

You can barely fucking  _ breathe  _ with him that close. You feel sort of like informing him that his spiritual pressure is squashing you, but on one hand, he’s probably well aware of that fact. You also don’t have  _ that  _ much of a death wish. So you keep your mouth shut. 

“I like it,” you say, doing the exact opposite of keeping your mouth shut. “It’s like the sun here, but better. Not as... artificial. More like the one in the human world.” 

A moment passes. Nnoitra doesn’t appear to be interested in hurting you, even if you do still feel a bit like you’re going to be separated from your head at any given second. If anything, he’s weirdly subdued. Because you apparently have forgotten what fear is at this point, you stick your hand back into the paint, and trace another nonsense symbol. 

“Do you want to try?” you ask when you can feel Nnoitra staring.

“Fuck no.”

You shrug again, and go back to painting. 

. . . 

A while after that, just when you’re starting to think that Nnoitra has left you alone for good, you get back to your assigned room to find two large buckets of paint outside of your door. 

Both glaring sunshine yellow. 

You laugh so hard it ends in you doubled over against the wall, struggling to breathe. 

You know exactly why these are here, and the concept is either so funny or so horrifying that your fucked-up Hollow brain doesn’t know how to react to it. 

The  _ fifth Espada  _ brought you paint. Awful, eye-searingly bright, sunshine yellow paint, and left it outside your door like a fresh kill. You don’t know if you should be in hysterics or fearing for your life. Maybe some of both. All you can say is that you’re not dead quite yet. 

And maybe that means something.

. . . 

Two murals later, both in pure yellow, you get the feeling that you’re doing something wrong. You know what you’re supposed to do next before you really think about it. 

. . . 

The scrape of metal buckets against the smooth tile floors of Las Noches never gets any less grating. The two Nnoitra brought you are  _ huge, _ too. Your weird human body is strong enough to drag them, but that doesn’t make the noise any better. 

You pause outside the door to Nnoitra’s room– still painted yellow-purple-pink– and stand there, suddenly feeling nervous. 

Well, it’s not like you’d be any better off if you left now. 

You knock, because of course you do, and wait for not very long at all. Nnoitra slams the door open with a glare. You flinch hard, but notice that the glare switches to something a little less intense when he sees that it’s you. 

“Sorry,” you say before you think. 

“Quit apologizing.” Nnoitra snaps back. 

“So– ...okay.” Eloquent. You are the  _ master  _ of staying cool in dangerous situations. You are also an idiot who walked yourself to the room of the most bloodthirsty Espada over  _ paint.  _

“What do you want?” he asks, and you actually have to think about how to say it. 

The whole situation is weird. You’re not really sure if you know how to say it, or if you really want to. Especially not if it’s smart to let what you’re thinking come out of your mouth. But Nnoitra is staring at you like he’s getting bored, and at this point, being an amusing little idiot is really all you have going for you. Like,  _ really  _ all you have going for you. 

“Do you want to paint with me?” You say it. You say it so directly that you have to actively force yourself not to cringe. Nnoitra looks at you like you’ve grown a second head, but he doesn’t try to choke you or anything, which is probably a good sign. 

“...why?” He actually sounds confused. Confused is never an emotion you thought you’d associate with Nnoitra Gilga, but here you are. 

You hold out a bucket of paint appeasingly. 

“You can piss off the Shinigami too. And anyway, yellow is a nice color. It’s better than all the  _ white.  _ Just splat some on a wall and see if you like it.” To your credit, your voice only shakes a little bit. 

Nnoitra keeps staring at you. You shake the bucket of paint a bit, because if you’re going to die at this point, you might as well make it big. 

“Damn, you’ve got a spine.”

“Yep. I’m an idiot.”

Nnoitra laughs, actually  _ laughs,  _ and takes the bucket of paint. He doesn’t sound mocking or mean, just like he thinks you’re sort of cute. You think that he might not want to chop your limbs off anymore. You  _ hope  _ that he doesn’t want to chop your limbs off anymore. 

Nnoitra pops the lid off of a bucket, and grins like you know he does in battle. It should be scary. You should be fearing for your life. 

He scoops up a handful of yellow, and splats it against the wall. 


End file.
